Abstract:

Global warming has recently raised a lot of concerns about the future of our planet in
terms of inhabitability. These concerns focus particularly on the possible increase in
the migration toward more hospitable urban areas within a country or toward more
hospitable countries. However, to our knowledge, there is no quantitative study to
assess the impact of global warming on migration in Sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, this
paper attempts to determine whether global warming increases rural-urban migration
and net emigration (i.e. emigration of nationals out of a country minus immigration of
foreigners into the country) over the period 2000-2005 in six forefront Sub-Saharan
countries, namely Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal. We found
that global warming alone is insignificantly related to rural-urban migration and net
emigration. However, when associated with other independent variables or cofactors
such as population growth rate and gross domestic product growth rate, global
warming increases both rural-urban migration and net emigration.